Baby Naming

I started writing this post last week but left it unfinished in the drafts because I didn't quite know if I was ready to share this.  And then, I saw this baby name link up at Team Whitaker and figured that was my sign to finish it up and press publish.

I was one of those girls who had notebooks full of baby names long before meeting my husband.  I think it's safe to say that none of those baby names will go to use (and for good reason - middle schoolers aren't very discerning when it comes to baby names), however, I still obsess over baby names.  And I honestly think that's a good thing.  Naming a child is a huge responsibility, perhaps one of the things we do as parents that affects them numerous times a day as they meet new people, fill out paperwork, answer phone calls, etc.  Like it or not, your child's name with give people first impressions of who they are even though their names say more about you than they might about them.  

Writing Lucia's name on the social security paperwork shortly after birth was probably the most surreal thing about the whole birth experience.  We were just adjusting to the idea that we had a daughter (we did not find out the sex before birth and I was convinced that we were having a son) and even though we had a name picked out months before, we just seemed inadequate for the task of naming her.  It's almost as if giving her a name was what made us parents.  After all, that is something that only a parent does.  (Not sure why I didn't quite feel that being pregnant or giving birth clearly marked me as "mom" but motherhood is complicated, ok?)  I think the naming process wouldn't have been so daunting if we had found out the sex and had referred to our child by that name in utero for months, instead of having mere hours before having to write it on paperwork, but we loved the surprise and we're planning to keep it the same every pregnancy forever.

Sometimes naming a child has much less far-reaching implications.  David and I have decided to name the two babies we lost to miscarriage.  Few people will ever use their names.  We'll never see them on name tags or write them on paperwork. But the names of all three of our children are important and they were all painstakingly chosen, so I've decided to include them all here.

Since we didn't find out whether Lucia was a boy or girl, we had to have two names at the ready.  The boys name was picked out before we were even pregnant (and in some ways before I even met my husband).  The girl's name was much harder to nail down since it seemed David and I had opposite taste in names.  My main choice for name inspiration was a book of women Saints that I owned.  I would thumb through the pages looking for names that I liked and only read the corresponding story if I felt the name was "in the running".  There were several names that were clearly not going to happen, like Hedwig and Hildegarde, but anything I half liked I ran by David and 99% he turned down on the spot.  Very early on, two front runners emerged: Alena and Lucia.  Alena was actually the favorite for quite some time and I can't remember why we decided on Lucia instead, but we did so somewhere between 20 and 30 weeks.  Lucia's name is equally in honor of St. Lucy and Sr. Lucia of Fatima as my husband has a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima.  Her middle name, Rose, was decided from the very beginning.  It is my middle name and my aunt's middle name in honor of my great grandmother, Rosa. 

After my miscarriage in October, several people urged us to name the baby.  It took a week or so before we felt comfortable with doing so.  Naming a miscarried child seemed so different than naming a living one.  We had names picked out for our next baby before this one was even conceived, but it didn't feel right to use either one of them.  I know many parents feel comfortable giving the child a gender specific name based on their gut instincts, but I didn't feel one way or another with that baby and was wrong with my gut instinct that Lucia was a boy, so we decided to choose a gender neutral name.  Searching "gender neutral Saint names" don't come up with many results, but I immediately found one that I loved: Francis.  Although more commonly associated with boys, Frances is a common enough girl's name and St. Frances Cabrini is one of my favorite Saints.  The biggest decision we had to make was which spelling to use.  While researching the name, I found a source that said that until the last few centuries, both spellings were used interchangeably for boys and girls, so we simply went with the one that was most aesthetically appealing to me.  We chose the middle name Michael after the Archangel.  When I think of this baby, I think of the baby being either "my Frank or Frannie" and joyfully look forward to the day when I find out which nickname fits.

This may sound a bit strange, but I had already chosen the name of our recently miscarried baby before I got pregnant again.  It was a gender neutral name that would only be used for another lost baby.  Not that I necessarily expected to miscarry again (and I truly did not think I would miscarry twice in a row) but it was a name that I came across when I found the name Francis and tucked away as another favorite.  It feels a bit odd to give a child a specific name because he/she passed before birth while we would have given that same child a different name had he/she been born.  But at the same time, we feel blessed to be able to do the only thing we can do to parent this child other than conception: name him/her.  We chose the name Julian Gabriel.  Julian, while usually considered masculine, is the name of many Catholic Saints, including the female St. Julian of Norwich.  Gabriel, like the middle name we chose for Francis, is in honor of the Archangel. 

I'm attempting this madness at the behest of Jen: